This article from The Lounsbury Tree (issue #15, May/June 1991) is a
reprint of an article from the Harvard
Alumni Bulletin, dated March 16, 1934.

The Pennoyer Scholarships

By Samuel Eliot Morison, '08

One of the curiosities that I have encountered in the course of
investigating early Harvard history is the Pennoyer bequest, in 1670,
of
a farm in England, which provided scholarships for Harvard College
during a space of 234 years. The history of these scholarships
is a
fine instance of faithful performance of a sacred trust.

William Pennoyer, citizen and chothworker in London, was one of a large
group of city merchants interested in English colonization. With
Maurice Thomson, sometime Governor of the East India Company, he early
acquired fishing interests at Cape Ann. During the English Civil
War
the two partners showed their political sympathies unmistakably--and
often profitably. They subscribed £6000 for the reduction of Ireland,
and received a share of confiscated Irish lands. They purchased
saltpetre from the East India Company, and at one time were delivering
a
thousand barrels of gunpowder a month to the State. Their "private
man
of war" Paramoor received letters of marque and reprisal; their frigate
Alum took £7000 of their bullion to India, to purchase saltpetre.
On
another vessel they shipped "naggs" from England and "steeres" from
Virginia to Barbados, where they owned sugar works; their advice was
asked by the Council of State as to "reducing Virginia to the interest
of the Commonwealth"; and they were joint adventurers in a project
of
the East India Company, for establishing a colony in the island of
Assada, now Nossi-bé.

Like many other London merchants, William Pennoyer was a Puritan and
charitably disposed; unlike most of them, he had no children.
A member
of the Society for the Propogation of the Gospel in New England (the
president of which was another Harvard benefactor, the great Robert
Boyle), he promised to give that society £600 for a building fund in
return for an annuity of £20 "to be paid to or for the vse of the
Colledge in New England forever." Before this agreement could
be
executed, William Pennoyer died, when it appeared that he had already
made provision both for the company and the College by will.
The
pertinent extract from it reads thus in our early records:

And for and concerning my Messuage in Norfolk let unto Robert Moore
at
the yearly Rent of fourty four Pound Per Annum, my Will is, that out
of
the Rents and Profits thereof ten pound per Annum be paid forever to
the
Corporation for propagating the Gospel in New England; and that wish
the
Residue thereof two Fellows and two Scholars forever be educated and
brought up in the College called Cambridge College in New England,
of
which I desire one of the so often as occasion shall present, may be
of
the line of posterity of the said Robert Penoyr, if they be capable
of
it; and the other of the Colony of Nox, or of the late called New haven
Colony, if conveniently may be.[1]

The younger Robert Pennoyer mentioned in the will was a younger brother
of the testator. He came over in the Hopewell to Boston in 1635
at the
age of 21, unmarried, and figures in the Massachusetts Bay Records
(i.
284) as having fled from the Colony rather than answer to the Court
for
an attempted seduction or rape. He next appeared at Gravesend,
L.I.,
and then at Stamford in the New Haven Colony, where in 1648 he was
"complained against for drinking wine and becoming noisy and turbulent,
and abusing the watchman." After that diversion, Robert married
and
became a much respected citizen.

What of the "Colony of Nox"? How many people like myself must
have
puzzled over that word! The Harvard authorities over a space
of sixty
years evidently thought it some queer nickname of the New Haven Colony,
and, whenever awarding a Pennoyer scholarship to a New Havenite, the
solemnly entered in the records that he was of the "Colony of Nox or
New
Haven." After searching the New Haven records backwards and forwards,
and finding no trace of "Nox," I did what puzzled Harvard historians
always do in the end - I asked Mr. Albert Matthews, '82, about it;
and,
as usual, he solved the question. "Nox" was simply a scribe's
error for
"now." William Pennoyer wrote "Colony now or of late called New
Haven
Colony," as that colony had been merged in Connecticut before he
died.[2]

The "messuage in Norfolk" was a farm of 92 acres in the parish of Pulham
St. Mary the Virgin, hear the borders of Suffolk, and about fifteen
miles south of Norwich; a farm of heavy soil, suitable for growing
wheat. With his other property, Mr. Pennoyer left it to a board
of
trustees, in order to secure the faithful performance of his bequest.
The first payment of rent, £34 after deducting the £10 due to the
society with the long name, was received by Harvard College in 1679,
and
divided between the two teaching fellows and two "Schollars of the
colonie of Nox or New Haven."

A few years later remittances fell off so sharply that President Mather,
on his mission to England, looked into it. One of the trustees,
Samuel
Crisp, handed over to Mr. Mather a Mercator's Atlas, a portrait of
Mr.
Pennoyer,[3] and certain arrears of rent -- exactly how much the
president, with that indifference to money matters typical of the great,
was unable to recall. "To my best remembrance," he wrote Mr.
Crisp, "I
had of you £42 at one time, £11 at another time, and it runs in my
mind
that I had something more at another time, but I have perfectly
forgotten how much it was."[4] The actual amount, as Mr. Crisp
reminded
him, was £80 9s 9d a sum which the Reverend President completely forgot
to repay. As this Crisp-Mather route of remittance was not very
profitable to the College, the Corporation, about the year 1693,
appointed Richard Mico of London to collect the rent. His first
instalment was "3 casque of pewter" which sold in Boston for £77, which
the Corporation divided five ways. The two Fellows who did the
tutoring
at that time, John Leverett and William Brattle, took the larger split,
£20 each. Jabez Wakeman and Nathaniel Collins, sophomores "belonging
to
the Colony of Nox," got half as much, and the balance, as a consolation
prize, went to a graduate, Noadiah Russell of New Haven Colony, who
had
been promised a Pennoyer stipend when in College, but never received
it
as no Pulham rent was coming through.

Richard Mico and his son Joseph continued to collect the rent from the
trustees and remit it to Harvard through the year 1769, their only
reward, apparently, being the thanks of the Corporation and, on one
occasion, a box of bayberry candles. After a short hiatus, the
agency
was placed in the hands of Joseph's grandson, Thomas Gibson, and
remained in his family until 1872. Mr. Gibson faithfully collected
the
rent during the Revolutionary War, and sent over the arrears shortly
after the surrender of Cornwallis.

Before 1740, but at what eact date I have been unable to discover, the
original board of trustees for William Pennoyer's charitable bequests
had died out, and been succeeded by the Governors of Christ's Hospital.
This was the famous Bluecoat School in London founded by Edward VI.
And
until the year 1903 the Governers of Christs's Hospital, without charge
to Harvard College, found tenants for the Pulham farm, collected the
rent, and managed the property.

Down to 1737 the Pulham rents were used to eke out the tutors' salaries,
and to help support an occasional scholar from New Haven who escaped
going to Yale. For over half a century thereafter, the income
was
allowed to accumulate, until in 1792 it amounted to £720, half of which
was funded at four per cent., and the rest "carried to the account
of
Salaries and Grants." The regular payment of stipends to scholars
was
then resumed. In 1802 appeared the first descendant of Robert
Pennoyer
-- Jared Weed, class of 1807 -- to claim the preference; he was granted
$100 a year while in College. Among the Pennoyer scholars of
the
nineteenth century were the historians Jared Sparks and John G. Palfrey;
the theologian George Rapall Noyes; and William H. Appleton, later
president of Swarthmore COllege. In the present century, at least
one
man of the Pennoyer name and blood has enjoyed the scholarship
established by his remotely great-uncle in seventeenth-century England.

Although the available revenue from the Pennoyer bequest increased after
1792 by funding operations, the rent from "Asten's Farm," as the
property at Pulham was called, long remained stationary. Toward
the end
of the nineteenth century it even decreased, owing to the agricultural
depression in England. For many years, the farm yielded but $117.63
annually; less than the original rent in 1671. Consequently,
in 1897,
the Harvard Corporation instituted proceedings to sell the farm.
The
Governors of Christ's Hospital were glad to be rid of a troublesome
responsibility; but consent had to be obtained of Her Majesty's Charity
Commissioners; the copyhold section of the farm had to be enfranchised,
at a cost lf £112, 9s, 11d paid to the lords of the manor; and a
purchaser had to be found. All this took time; and it was not
until
April, 1903, that Asten's Farm, parish of Pulham St. Mary the Virgin,
County of Norfolk, was sold. The sum of $4,029.52 which it brought
was
added to the Pennoyer Fund, which now stands in the College Treasurer's
books at $13,686.25, and provides two annual scholarships of $450 each,
the one incumbent to be preferably of the "line or posterity" of Robert
Pennoyer, "and the other of the Colony of Nox, or of late called New
haven Colony, if conveniently may be."

Footnotes

[1] Publications Colonial Society of Mass., xv. 288-89. There
are also
bequests in the will to a married sister Elinor Redding in Boston,
and
to William Hooke, former minister of New Haven, and his sons John and
Walter, both Harvard men -- the latter died at Masulipatam, where he
was
chaplain of an East India Company factory. It was perhaps from
the
Hooke boys that Mr. Pennoyer learned about Harvard College; but there
were many among his associates, such as Robert Boyle and Henry Ashurst,
who could have told him about it.

[2] Years ago, I find, Andrew McFrland Davis (S.B. 1854) explained it
in
the Magazine of American History, xvii. (1887) 243-44.

There have been several letters about the Pennoyer Scholarship, but
no
room to include them in this issue. Harold C. Lounsbury wrote
in
December, 1988 suggesting that additional contributions be given to
the
fund. Ann G. Peavey wrote, in Ju. 1988, questioning additional
contributions because her father, Ernest Westervelt Carman, class of
1908 at Harvard, set up a scholarship which was later absorbed into
"the
total schollarship funding and no longer honored." The editor
followed
up on the Pennoyer fund. It is intact, held as a separate endowment;
yields $2300-$2400 annually (1988). It is now valued (12/28/90)
at
$37,769.97. They would welcome additional contributions.
Candidates
will be asked to submit genealogical documentation for eligibility.